In the Shadow of the Big Apple

In the Shadow of the Big Apple is a story about Kenny, a mischievous boy growing up in an Italian neighborhood in 1950s New Jersey. Whether Kenny is wrecking havoc on the rides at Palisades Amusement Park, setting the field on fire at Columbia Park, going from camp zero to camp hero at McDougal's Camp, or vacationing at The Highlands, Kenny finds himself in trouble. Author Tom Piantanida breathes this era to life as only one who lived in New Jersey at that time could. Summers in the sweltering tenements, where sewer-gas laden breezes carried with them a reminder of the proximity to Caputo's Fish Market, Giuliano's Deli, and the car barns, drive Kenny to seek escape by finagling himself into a stalag-like summer camp, complete with swarming bats in the dorm, a snapping turtle in the zero-visibility swimming pool, reports of quicksand to keep hikers on the trail, and burned-out counselors. Using his "private entrance," Kenny spends afternoons at Palisades Amusement Park where he gets even for all those years in Catechism Class by swamping a boatload of nuns on the motorboat ride. On one of their many trips to The Big Apple, Kenny and his not-quite-juvenile-delinquent cousins sneak into a movie theater in New York City, only to find that it's a 3D movie that requires special glasses. The cousins fare no better during the family's zero-income summer vacation on the Jersey Shore, when they "borrow" a boat, only to find that it is porous, and despite the fact that the vessel is sinking, the irate owner forces them to push it across a stagnant lagoon. One cousin refuses to eat with the family after discovering that he has been fed "piss" clams, which he steadfastly refuses to believe spout only sea water, and the other cousin concocts tall tales about being stabbed by a horseshoe crab. Symbolically, Kenny never quite grabs the brass ring on the local carousel, but he nonetheless enjoys the challenge of learning to whisk four rings from the chute at a single swipe. Readers will be amazed at the amount of trouble young Kenny can manage to get into as he learns important life lessons. Older readers will be able to relate many of the stories to times of their own youth.